t's over now," Bennett heard the mystic say. "Please try to relax."
He found himself fighting with awful exertion to raise himself from the sidewalk—which had turned into a couch. His clothes clung to him with a clammy wetness that chilled him.
He flung his arms out in a frantic gesture that knocked a lamp from an end-table and sent it crashing to the floor.
Not until then did he feel the mystic's firmly gentle hands on his shoulders, urging him down, and know that he was not actually dying. He lay back for a moment, gasping great gulps of welcome air into his lungs.
"I think you will be all right now," Lima said.
"You were right when you said the experience would not be pleasant," Bennett said, still battling for breath. "I hope the results will be worth it."
"I believe you will find that they are," Lima told him reassuringly. "Also, it can be of assistance to you in still another way. The sequence your dream followed—being a natural, perhaps even a probable, aftermath of your past decisions and movements—could actually happen. Therefore it would be wise to avoid such decisions in real life."